These retrospective are usually done on the one year anniversary date but I don’t have an actual date.  Sure, WordPress.com says I created a blog on December 28, 2010 but that was accidental.  I made a few half-hearted posts in January and talked mostly about the blizzard in February.  I didn’t start formalizing a plan and sharing my thoughts until March.

What was my plan? My goal was to kick-start creativity which has been lying dormant for so long.  I didn’t aim to write about Richard Armitage.  Being part of a blog ring, I injected him in for fandom flavor as a way of talking about something else; the goal was to stop talking and start blogging about something – anything – to get used to the process of writing again.  The Fanstravaganza 2 experience in March was interesting.  It was difficult to write about one topic for eight straight days, but at least I had a topic from which to draw.  After the event concluded, the process became downright grueling even without breaks caused by Winston.

For months I privately agonized over the slow going in conceiving, composing and polishing a post. It was a constant state of blogger’s block except the hurdle wasn’t that high; I just needed to get my leg up and over it.  This continued through the spring and summer, and then a funny thing happened.  While blogging the London travelogue, words came faster and poured more smoothly.  In an effort to be entertaining, I found that the longer the post, the more creative room I had.  That’s not to say the events aren’t true, they are; it’s that I was able to incorporate inventive ideas into the story such as Winston and the competing psyche elements, Jodi, Jada, and Quiet One  in order to help the reader understand how important the trip was on different levels.  The story elicited positive feedback which fed the process.

Oh, the positive feedback caused a problem of its own. Did you know you can develop a compulsion to research blog statistics on what search terms find your site (bad idea!) and the number of views you get a day?  Checking for comments to fulfill the proper netiquette of timely replies led to constantly checking for comments and mulling over the reasons for too few or too many.  (I eventually restricted myself to checking three time daily and gave up predicting what topic would prove popular.  Who knew people would have much to say about fish and chips, beer and mushy peas?)

But wait, there’s more!  It didn’t stop there.  Out of the blue, I made my first fan video. That same week I bought art supplies in preparation of drawing again.  I can’t begin to describe to you Dear Reader how miraculous that it is. It’s like waking and finding myself 20 pounds thinner- well, almost.  I’ve never made a fan video and haven’t touched a sketchbook in 20 years.  It’s as if the creative sap is rising. Some of it has surfaced in drips and drops.  If I could attach a spigot and let it flow freely I would, but things haven’t reached that point yet.

So the blogging experiment has been a success so far.  I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe the enforced act of writing, even when I didn’t want to do so got the wheels turning and the brain chugging.  Writing comes easier because I’m used to the process now.  I haven’t returned to writing fiction (well, complete stories) again but that will come.  Things still squeak and sputter but I’ve come far from last December.  I owe it to you Dear Reader who has kept up the encouragement through both breaks and feverish posting.  I couldn’t have done this without you.

In the next two days I will interview two bloggers well known to almost all of you: RAFrenzy and Servetus.  They will discuss their experiences and views on blogging.  Stay tuned.

NEXT: An interview with RAFrenz